D-day fast approaching for mobile friendly websites

The clock is ticking. Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm change is now just three weeks away.

The change will happen on April 21 and has been dubbed “Mobilegeddon.”

What is Mobilegeddon?

Web developers across the world snapped to attention last month when Google announced its intentions to drastically alter the search ranking criteria for mobile devices.

Google explained it this way: “As more people use mobile devices to access the Internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns.”

Is it a big deal?

You bet. It’s like the analogue television going digital, it’s like super becoming unleaded and it’s about desktop becoming mobile.

Australian businesses have a clear choice – they can do nothing and watch their mobile search rankings slide or quickly make their websites mobile-friendly.

This view has backed up by Zineb Ait Bahajji, a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, who says Mobilegeddon will be the largest search algorithm update Google has ever launched.

What will happen if I ignore it?

No.1 is that you will lose your search engine rankings, which for businesses generally means a loss of at least 20% of traffic.

And what about your existing customers who are looking you up on a smart phone to check your contact details? They will think you are out of business.

Should I wait and see what happens?

It’s critical that mobile sites are enhanced before the April 21 deadline.

The opportunity is there for websites who do their homework to get ahead of the game.

Those who miss the deadline will be forced to play a frustrating game of catch-up.

How to get ready

If your site is already mobile-friendly, you won’t have much to worry about. However, if you’ve not yet implemented a mobile strategy for your online presence, now is the critical time to get it done.

Confirm the mobile version of your site is active and functional. Responsive designs are the most popular, but you can also have a separate hosted mobile version of your site. Google doesn’t have a preference, as long as mobile users’ experience isn’t interrupted.

Confirm Google’s mobile bots can crawl your site. If Google can’t see it, it may as well not even be there.

Check each individual page of your site on a mobile device to ensure navigability. Just because your home page is mobile friendly doesn’t mean the rest of your site is.

Are you confident you’ve done everything possible to avoid being slugged by the changes when they go live on April 21?